First time for me at the (finished yesterday) 2010 Tamworth Country Music Festival.
What an amazing event. An entertainment mecca and a unique forum for changing lives and launching stars.
Entertainment everywhere with bands and entertainers continually performing in many venues and in the streets.

The event is not all country and does flirt with other genres which was the window of opportunity Cliff and the boys climbed in.

Vicrock members would love it I have no doubt. There are big names, small names, unknowns and anything and everything in between to entertain you.

The place is not dry, flat and dusty as I imagined but rather green, lush, hilly and beautiful. The town is very modern mixed with lovely old buildings. There are many pubs which seemed to be filled to the rafters with good folk enjoying the bands and cooling with relief from the heat with refreshments in hand.

We ran into several familiar faces from Melbourne who rocked up to support Cliff and the guys at their gigs. There was also a contigent from the central coast NSW and Brissy who saw the band listed in the official guide so rocked up too. It is great all getting together away from home.

We did not know what to expect at Tamworth, had no real contacts or friends on the inside so looked upon the adventure as a learning opportunity.
It turned out to be the best. Some amazing opportunities dropped into the band's hands, so they were flat chat. One day they performed pretty much 30 on 30 off from 9am to midnight. They were absolutely stuffed that night. The outcome was some great contacts were made and new fans won. Looks like we will be making the 1152 km trip again in 2011 which is exciting.

Mark from No Brakes (Sydney) was an Atomic Hi-Tone for the event. What a champion and a spunk. Us girls reckon he is delicious. Mark drove the 6 hours from Sydney to help out. After being with our crazy lot, Mark reckons if he was full time in the band, all his earnings would be needed for counciling.

We had awesome roadies. Foxy, Jazza, Brian from the Chromefest gang and Margy. The guys couldn't have managed without their help it was so gruelling a workload.
The street gigs were unreal. With nearly 700 buskers there was a lot of competition, but the guys hit a chord with the totally new crowd and attracted a big crowd each time they fired up.

If you have never been to this event before, put it on your short list of to do's.